I’ve been listening to this audiobook, mostly while walking the dog, and am enjoying it immensely. I’d never read the book, and really can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying this restored edition. Hemingway’s life in Paris in the mid-20s; Paris, that ‘moveable feast’. Gertrude Stein. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Ezra Pound. James Joyce. Oh, and Ernest Hemingway.

That period between the wars. They didn’t have much, but got enough money to eat and drink well on occasion; to bet on the horses, before moving on to watching bicycle racing; to walk through the streets of Paris; to mingle with other writers and try to learn from them; to encounter people who were just living through that ‘lost generation’, mostly ‘tight’; they compared war medals and war wounds; to borrow books and read and read; to sit at street-side cafes, and just write.

In reading reviews about this edition, there are discussions about how it improves Hemingway’s portrayal of Fitzgerald. I’m not so sure it was ever really a bad review anyway. That he might have gotten hammered sometimes? That he might have adjusted his stories for the market? Wow, shocking.

I’m enjoying the narrator’s voice, as well; he’s got a Michael Enright thing going. I’m probably half way through it, but am loving it. Give it a try. I will pick up the restored print edition once I’ve listened through.